


A lone staircase

by albion



Series: Many Nights [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Doomed Relationship, M/M, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Terminal Illnesses, kisame works in aquariums is pretty much my default modern day AU headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albion/pseuds/albion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking down into the water, Uchiha Itachi sees his sin, and his redemption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. water

When Uchiha Itachi is seventeen, he moves out of his guardian’s house and leaves the neighbourhood for a small apartment complex downtown near his university. He thinks at the time that he is going to study engineering. He ends up declaring his major as history instead, but isn’t too concerned, and that is approximately the time he meets Sasori at the local theatre during a performance of The Cherry Orchard.

Sasori, a master puppeteer, self-proclaimed artist and lover of Russian theatre, introduces Itachi to the members of his puppet troupe, who are all remarkably reasonable people in Itachi’s opinion save for a man named Orochimaru, who reminds Itachi uncomfortably of a snake. 

One fine morning Orochimaru professes his undying love for Itachi, who runs fairly quickly back to his apartment and shuts himself off from the world for a good two weeks. When Sasori comes over finally to ask where he’d been, the news comes out and Orochimaru mysteriously disappears from Sasori’s entourage.

 

.

 

“Have you ever thought about finding a roommate?”  
“What would I need the company of others for?”  
“I don’t know. You’re young, Itachi, and you act like you’re my age.”  
Itachi ran his fingers around the rim of his coffee cup.  
“You don’t have a roommate.”  
“I’m a 31 year old man. You’re a 17 year old university student. It’s different.”  
Itachi frowned, “do you have anyone in mind?”  
“I doubt you’d listen to anything I’d suggest after the Orochimaru incident.”

Despite this, Itachi asks Sasori to see if anyone he knew was in need of a roommate, someone to share the gas bill and the rent, and the cost of paying for several television channels that Itachi never found much use for anyway. Around the same time, he also decides that he needs a part time job as his guardian back home had cut all ties with Itachi the day he left, and the funds in his back account are rapidly shrinking.

 

.

 

(and thinking of home was too painful anyway, memories of water and blood and the face of his brother, stark white against the darkness of the night sky.)

 

.

 

In a strange masochistic twist of fate, the only job opening he finds is at the local aquarium, and during a rather aggravating presentation in which he is forced to explain to a group of snot nosed fifth graders how exactly hammerhead sharks mated whilst simultaneously attempting to suppress his panic at being surrounded by so much water, a heavy hand lands on his shoulder and he looks up into the grinning face of one of the other employees; a man he had noticed around the building but had never really approached.

Itachi never really approached anyone if he could help it.

 

.

 

“You look like you’re having fun.”  
“I am trying to work.”  
“Sure you are. Come on, I’ll handle this.”

The mysterious employee then launches into an entire discourse on sharks, which thankfully leaves the children in awe. Itachi is grateful, and is about to leave when the tall man appears again.

“What’s your name?”  
“…You can’t read my name tag?”  
“I always prefer it when people tell me themselves.”  
“…Itachi.”  
“Itachi, huh? I’m Kisame.”  
“I know,” replies Itachi, who had already looked at his name tag.

 

.

 

Kisame drags Itachi around the entire aquarium, talking incessantly on just about every different kind of fish there is, and Itachi can’t quite tell if Kisame is genuinely attempting to make friends with him, or if he’s just glad to find someone to listen. After he realises his shift is up, he moves to go, but Kisame stops him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, huh.”  
“I suppose.”  
“It was nice meeting you, Itachi.”  
Itachi doesn’t reply, but walks out of the automatic doors, ignoring the sense of panic that washes over him every time he passes under the glass arch connected to the tank in which ten sharks swim languidly around.

 

.

 

(that night, he doesn’t sleep well, images of kisame’s sharp-toothed grin and black curly hair and screaming amidst the splashing of water.)  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set before the events of 'Room 89', and will mention Sasori, Deidara, their ill fated relationship, as well as some other members of the Akatsuki.


	2. and death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the here and now, Kisame lives while Itachi dies.

It’s a couple of months before Itachi summons up the courage to ask Kisame where he lives. It turns out that he still lives with his parents, and they’ve been looking for a chance to get rid of him. Itachi doesn’t want to be that chance, but Sasori’s behind him constantly, and he caves in, in the way he told Sasuke never to.

 

Sometimes he hates himself.

 

Kisame moves in, Sasori grows quiet, and for a while, the nightmares stop. They go to work, they earn money and argue over who’s cooking dinner and what dinner should be, and one day Itachi realises with a horrified shudder that Kisame might be considering him a friend.

 

.

 

(the last person who made that mistake paid for it in leagues of water and blood.)

 

.

 

One day, Kisame picks up the mail from the front door and notices an envelope, clearly not a bill or a catalogue or promotion, thick and expensive and written on it in perfect formed blue ink words: Uchiha Itachi.

 

“Itachi! You’ve got mail!”

Itachi comes out of the bathroom, still shaking his hair dry in his towel, and Kisame thinks with a stab of something, _dear god he’s beautiful_. He plucks the envelope from Kisame's hand with long, precise fingers, stares at the handwriting, and rips it open with a long deft movement. He scans the short piece of paper quickly, folds it up again, and looks Kisame straight in the eye. Despite their height and age difference, Kisame suddenly feels afraid.

 

“Never speak of this letter again.”

Kisame nods once, mutely.

 

.

 

Life carries on, and one fine afternoon, Sasori announces that he has a new roommate, called Deidara. They all go out for dinner one evening, and Itachi studies his long blonde hair and his wide mouth and thinks: I don’t like him.

 

Deidara apparently thinks the same way, for when he gets up to visit the bathroom, he makes sure to kick Itachi purposefully in the shin, just like a child.

 

And Itachi thinks again: I don’t like him.

 

.

 

(it’s almost Christmas when everything suddenly crashes around him.)

 

.

 

The blood on the tissue is stark red, dissolving its way through the fibres like a stream, flowing into a river, flowing into an open sea, and Itachi sees his eyes, sees his black curly hair and his smile, so wild and free, filling with water and sinking— sinking—

 

Kisame hears him scream.

 

.

 

They give him one more year to live, but Itachi doesn’t tell Kisame.

 

He’s 21 years old, and he’s dying.

 

Perhaps this is divine punishment.

 

.

 

He finally decides to respond to the letter he got a long time ago, and sits down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and a pen.

 

And he writes the opening words, shakily,

_My dearest brother, Sasuke._

 

.

 

Uchiha Itachi is meticulous in his work and his house, keeping everything in its place and never letting anything slip his notice. Bloodstained tissues are never to be seen on counters, and medication bought to stave off the inevitable is hidden away from shark-like eyes.

 

.

 

He tells Sasori, because Sasori will only trade secrets for secrets and he’s fallen in love with the damn artist. Deidara later blows himself up. Itachi wonders what it’s like to be free.

 

Itachi cannot hide coughing, however, and one day Kisame asks angrily what’s wrong with him.

 

“Nothing is wrong. I’m fine.”  
“Tell me.”  
“No.”  
“But I’m your best friend!”  
“My best friend was Uchiha Shisui.”

 

There’s a pause. Itachi has never mentioned Shisui before, and Kisame doesn’t want to press the matter, but he does. Because he’s Hoshigaki Kisame, and he’s never been subtle.

 

“Where is he now?”  
“Dead.”  
“Oh.  Uh… how?”  
“Does it matter?”  
“Not… really, no. Not really.”

 

Itachi seems to be the only person who can whittle Kisame’s words down to nothing. He doesn’t bring up the subject again, until another letter arrives in the mail and Kisame cannot help himself; he opens it before Itachi can see.

 

He reads the words _our late father and mother_ and for the first time wonders what on earth Itachi has experienced. He looks up to see Itachi, furious beyond belief, and thrusts the letter at him with shaking hands.

 

He spends the night with Konan and Nagato and doesn’t return to their apartment for four days.

 

.

 

Eventually, Itachi calls.  
“Come home.”

Kisame does.

 

.

 

They’ve moved past colleagues, past friends, and now Kisame doesn’t know where they stand. He lives with a padlocked book of secrets, and Kisame has many secrets of his own but he’s scared to think about Itachi, scared to find out about him. Truly.

 

.

 

Revelations come, as they so often do, in a wave. Itachi is usually so careful, but one day he leaves his email open and Kisame doesn’t mean to look, but he does and he reads the sender, recognizes it as Itachi’s old guardian, the one who’d basically kicked him out and the one who has antagonized him ever since for reasons Kisame never knew until now, when he reads the entire thing and thinks that he’s going to be sick.

 

He hears the telephone ring downstairs, and hears Itachi answer.

He walks down the steps slowly, shaking, and Kisame has never dreaded something quite so badly.

 

.

 

He stops in the kitchen doorway.

 

“You never told me you’d killed them.”

Itachi looks up; phone cord twisted around one index finger. Kisame registers a brief moment of panic, before neutrality sinks back into those cold black eyes.

“Are you going to call the police?”  
“Perhaps.”

 

There’s a pause, and Kisame can hear the mumbling of someone else’s voice over the line, but Itachi doesn’t reply, only meets his gaze with eyes that seem red in the half light and suddenly Kisame’s hands are in Itachi’s hair and pulling out the hair tie he always wears, letting the wave of deep black fall down his shoulders. He looks almost like a woman, Kisame thinks, except Itachi’s arms and shoulders are strong with muscle and his hands are rough. He kisses him, and Itachi drops the phone and groans into his mouth and _God_ , love is stupid and love is blind and love is dangerous, but we’re here and we’re alive and Kisame thinks that he’s just made the best and worst decision of his life.

 

“Hello?” comes Sasori’s crackly voice from the telephone, “Itachi, are you there?”

 

They pull apart, breathing softly but heavily, and Itachi starts to cry.

 

.

 

(they both dream of water that night.)


End file.
